The original ClimateGate emails — correspondence derived from servers at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia — were released on the Internet in late 2009. Posted on a Russian server, they shook up the field of climate research. They showed collusion among climate scientists to hide their data, to suppress skeptical views and prevent their being published.

The CRU was one of the very small number of climate monitoring stations. Skeptical climate scientists found the CRU’s published climate data questionable and wanted to see the raw data — and how it had been adjusted. Freedom of Information requests — a legal procedure — elicited only the claim that they had lost the data, it was proprietary data, they could not share it.

Anthony Watts, a meteorologist and proprietor of the popular website wattsupwiththat.com, said:

In every endeavor of science, making your work replicable by others is a basic tenet of proof. If other scientists cannot replicate your work, it brings your work into question.

Climate scientists who did not agree with the findings of the CRU were dismissed as “deniers”, which was patently untrue. The climate skeptics did not deny that the earth had warmed, nor that it had warmed and cooled in the past. They were skeptical of alarmist conclusions based on computer programs that claimed to represent the entire climate of the earth — about which we still know very little.

Now a new batch of emails posted in late November to a Russian server shows that scientists at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit refused to share their U.S. government-funded data with anyone they thought would disagree with them. In 2009, the then head of the Research Unit, Dr. Phil Jones, told colleagues repeatedly that the U.S. Department of Energy was funding his data collection — and that officials at the Department of Energy agreed that he should not have to release the data in spite of FOIA requests.

“Work on the land station data has been funded by the U.S. Dept of Energy, and I have their agreement that the data needn’t be passed on. I got this [agreement] in 2007,” Jones wrote in a May 13, 2009, email to British officials, before listing reasons he did not want them to release data.

Two months later, Jones reiterated that sentiment to colleagues, saying that the data “has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (U.S. Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original station data.”

A third email from Jones written in 2007 echoes the idea: “They are happy with me not passing on the station data,” he wrote.

The released emails show only correspondence between Jones and his colleagues, not his correspondence withe the U.S.Department of Energy. Anthony Watts said “What’s missing is a …directive from DOE that they should withhold station data gathered under their grant. The email may be there, but … still under lock and key.

Attorney Chris Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, wants that key. He has filed FOIA with the DOE, requesting the emails they exchanged with Jones.They have until December 29 before they must legally respond to Horner’s request.

“So far no administration department has bothered to respond, indicating they…believe the time bought with stonewalling might just get them off the hook for disclosure,” Horner said. “Not with us it won’t.”

Since the emails were made public, Phil Jones has changed his tune. He has accepted that he should have been more open, and has made the station data discussed in these emails publicly available. Anthony Watts said that while much of the data is now available, the methods of adjusting it — statistical modification meant to ‘normalize’ the data and potentially highlight certain trends — remains a secret. “The fact that they are trying to keep people from replicating their studies — that’s the issue,” Watts said. “Replication is the most important tenet of science.”

The CRU at East Anglia, once exposed, has been careful to refer to the emails as “stolen,” “illegally hacked,” attempting to emphasize that the emails that exposed their wrongdoing were revealed “because of a crime.” Yet the collusion, the use of clearly false data [Michael Mann’s hockey-stick graph], reveal that there is way more at risk here than a little embarrassment for the climate scientists at East Anglia. There is government funding, attempts to hide data that might be damaging, reputations, university appointments, big money grants, the reputation of Science itself, and inevitably — the search for truth.

And as far as the “thief” or the “hacker” — that may well have been a member of the CRU team acting as a whistleblower. There is another release yet to come, we are told, containing even more damaging material, which is undoubtedly the reason for the U.S. DOJ signing up with the UK police to try to find the “hacker.” Trying to get other scientists fired, their papers rejected, a scientist’s PhD rescinded simply because they do not agree with your conclusions, is far more ‘criminal’ than a release of incriminating emails.

This is not the way that science is supposed to work. Science is meant to be always skeptical, always ready to leave all data open to others so they can reproduce the conclusions. That is the only way science can progress.

ClimateGate 2.0 has been even more revealing than the first round of exposure of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and Professor Michael Mann and his cohorts. Politicized science, coverups, falsification of evidence, and attempts to suppress the work of those who disagree. It just is not the way Science is supposed to work.

The revelations contained in the emails is increasing public doubt in the extravagant claims of global warming. The percentage of people who accept the warming theory is plummeting. Now Bishop Hill reports that the IPCC has declared itself above the law.The meeting of IPCC WGII lead author meeting in San Francisco has ruled on freedom of information legislation:

…the IPCC member states have ruled on freedom of information legislation. Specifically, it has been decided that FoI does not apply to IPCC material. This is false. FoI is national legislation. These laws can only be interpreted by the relevant courts. These laws can only be changed by the relevant parliaments. The civil servants that speak on behalf of their countries have no right to usurp FoI legislation, and the IPCC has no say in this matter.

Now the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is working with the United Kingdom police to pursue the leaker of the 2009 and 2011 “ClimateGate” emails. Last week the DOJ sent a search-and-seizure letter to the host of three climate-change-“skeptic” blogs. Last night, UK police raided a blogger’s home and removed computers and equipment.

The leaked ClimateGate records derailed the Obama administration’s much desired ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation in the U.S. and internationally as well as climate talks for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. The emails and computer code were produced with taxpayer funds and held on taxpayer-owned computers both in the US and the UK and all were subject to the UK Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and state FOIA laws.

They were also being unlawfully withheld in both the UK (by the University of East Anglia) and in the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for more than two years. Ken Cuccinelli, Attorney General of the state of Virginia is pursuing specific anti-fraud authority to seek records from University of Virginia following up on revelations from the first release of ClimateGate emails, for evidence of possible fraud against the taxpayers. So far University of Virginia has spent upwards of $1 million fighting Cuccinellli’s request, and opposing every effort to produce the requested documents.

Now the Department of Justice is, with the UK police, attempting to find the leaker. The ClimateGate email release has suggested that there is yet a third, and even more revealing batch of emails to come. Yet authorities are pursuing the leaker, rather that those who unlawfully refused to release records that were unlawfully withheld under Freedom of Information laws. They are on the wrong side of this one, which suggests that they are desperately trying to prevent a further release of records that might further expose the faulty science upon which the White House’s embrace of global warming, subsidies for alternate energy, regulations from the EPA and the Energy Department that are meant to replace the cap-and-trade that they couldn’t get past Congress.

The text of the DOJ request to the ISP is here. The extent of the information they want to attempt to prosecute the leaker is quite breathtaking, and their interest in the fraud on the taxpayer that has been revealed is even more so.

The climate is always warming and cooling. It is a natural process. Over the past century the climate warmed by about one degree — in a hundred years. Surely we can adapt to that. Now it has been cooling since 1998. Perhaps we don’t need to spend billions in futile efforts to change from cheap, plentiful energy to alternate energy sources that simply don’t work. When or if wind and solar energy technology is capable of providing cheap dependable energy, the government won’t have to be involved. The market will support it.

The Climate meeting in Durban is just opening, and the new batch of ClimateGate e-mails —Climategate 2.0 — is dominating environmental news. “They not only reveal bias, but also some private doubts among the core scientist faithful about the scientific basis for the IPCC’s policy goals,”as climate scientist Roy Spencer explains.

In trying to learn about a subject as complex as climate, scientists may have diametrically opposing views on some matter, even given the same evidence. They may come to completely different conclusions about what their measurements mean. Scientists are humans with biases.

The problem with climate science, as we now refer to ‘global warming,’ is that governments got all excited about “saving the planet” and funded that research which would look for the causes of global warming and the problems that would result from that warming. In other words they funded one side of the question, and neglected to fund any science intended to demonstrate that warming and cooling were natural phenomenon.

The funding — grants, prestige, facilities, equipment, assistants — was not only plentiful, but encouraged anyone in any sort of scientific field to write a grant proposal that would make their specialty important to climate. That biases appeared is not surprising. That some would go too far in defense of their own biases is unfortunate, and revealed by this new release of Climategate 2.0 emails.

Ever since NOAA’s James Hansen chose the hottest day of summer in Washington DC to warn Congress about the out-of-control warming of the earth, and how they must act to save the planet, Congress has encouraged the investigation. Dr. Hansen also provides us with an example of the rewards for the warmist, as his “outside” earnings from speeches, appearances, and protests have topped $1 million. Outside income that he neglected to report to his institution.

Dr. Roy Spencer has written a generous essay on Bias in Scientific Research, Climategate 2.0, and the scientists who supported the IPCC efforts. The IPCC was founded over 20 years ago to support political and energy policy goals, not to search for scientific truth.

For the Climategate 2.0 emails, go to Anthony Watt’s blog” Watts up with that“, or to Mark Moran’s Climate Depot, or to Steven Milloy’s JunkScience.com. It’s great fun. They validate everything the skeptics have been saying for years.

It is almost impossible to estimate the total of the vast wasted sums spent by governments (plural) on policies and programs derived from climate change: the race to eliminate carbon in all its forms, the attack on coal mines, the attack on offshore oil drilling, electric cars, wind farms, solar arrays, the EPA and all its regulation, the Department of Energy and all its grants and subsidies, the ‘smart grid,” Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth, the Chicago Carbon Exchange, the 20,000 old folks who died from fuel poverty in Britain last year, down to all the advertising that brags about how “green” a business is. A pox on all of it. The damage done by this delusion is incalculable. As Christopher Booker says in The Telegraph:

The scare over man-made global warming is not only the scientific scandal of our generation, but a suicidal flight from reality.

Do read up on this story. It’s important to understand what is going on, and to try to understand the consequences of all this deception. It affects everything, absolutely everything.